A note of warning for PHP 5 users: if you try to fetch the CURLINFO_CONTENT_TYPE using curl_getinfo when there is a connect error, you will core dump PHP. I have informed the Curl team about this, so it will hopefully be fixed soon. Just make sure you check for an error before you look for this data.

Although it has been noted that cURL outperforms both file_get_contents and fopen when it comes to getting a file over a HTTP link, the disadvantage of cURL is that it has no way of only reading a part of a page at a time.

For example, the following code is likely to generate a memory limit error:

//you can figure out the rest ! but thought the reg expression is useful as well
?>

But here is the catch, you may want to make sure curl connects to the server under the same session as the browser. So naturally you pass the session cookie through the curl system either by the cookie jar system, or through the query string in the path.

This is where you will get stuck. PHP will need write access to the same session file simultaneously!! causing serious hanging issues!

This is why you should close off your session before you make curl take a page snapshot!

If you have upgraded to using thread safe PHP (with apache 2 MPM=worker) note thatCURLOPT_COOKIEJAR / CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE both need an absolute path set for the cookie file location and no longer take a relative path. (As before, also remember to have set correct permissions to allow a writeable cookie file/dir by apache)[php 4.3.7/apache v2.0.49]